Recently I was asked to tell my story at a storytelling FIESTA sponsored by WOSAC, Womenβs Studies Advisory Council of the University of Arizona. WOSAC supports the UAβs Gender and Women Studies department.
As one of the oldest living WOSAC members, if not the oldest, I was happy to share my personal story of a changing woman living in a changing world. And Iβm happy to share it with my readers.
I was fortunate to be born into a family that valued education and achievement. My parents were of modest means but my mother worked as a commercial artist so I was able to attend Radcliffe College and medical school without the burden of student loans.
In those days a womanβs highest goal was motherhood, preceded, of course, by wifehood. In 1947 on our first day of college, the dean told us we were there for one purpose only: to become educated mothers to our children. I wanted to become a doctor so this was disconcerting. Radcliffe did not deter me from pursuing my non-traditional goal, but I had to plow ahead alone because there were virtually no women role models.
I never thought of myself as a pioneer but in 1951, the year I entered medical school, only 394 women in the entire country did so (5.3 percent). In 2017 women represented 50.7 percent of the 21,338 matriculants. For the first time, the number of women enrolling in U.S. medical schools exceeded the number of men. If I had known in 1951 what a rare bird I was, I might have been too frightened to fly.
By the way, it was then perfectly legal to restrict the entering medical school class to no more than 5 percent women. In 1972, this practice was rendered illegal by the Educational Equality Act but was not enforceable until 1979 because of lobbying by college athletic departments.
Medicine was definitely a manβs world in those days. I look back at myself and those days with amazement. In my pre-feminist innocence and ignorance I accepted without question attitudes and treatments that today would lead to a lawsuit. And, yes, I had my #MeToo episodes in both college and medical school.
Third year medical students all had to take a rotation in Obstetrics-Gynecology. Male students had an obstetrical on-call room in the hospital with four bunk beds and a bathroom with a shower. Students were on call around the clock for a week and were expected to stay in the hospital.
I was assigned a cot in a closet-sized room, airless except for one window opening onto an airshaft shared by the quarters for research animals. I cursed the scientist using roosters in an experiment because no sooner had I fallen asleep after delivering a nightβs worth of babies than the roosters noticed the dawn.
Even worse than no sleep was the problem of keeping clean. Women students had to use the bathroom down the hall that did NOT have a shower. Desperate conditions call for desperate measures and I found the nerve to shoo all of the men out of their room and take over the shower.
The specialty of OB-Gyn deals only with women, but enlightenment came slowly to this group. On the first day of our rotation the head of the department introduced the course saying, βWith apologies to the women attending this lecture to become physicians, the function of young women is to have babies.β Eighteen years later that remark somehow raised itself into my consciousness as I was hurrying to the hospital. I was so enraged that if I saw that man in the street I would have kicked him.
My last year of medical school brought a moment of panic. I felt confident that I could be a doctor but suddenly had qualms about how to be a WOMAN DOCTOR. How do they manage to be doctors AND women? Do they marry? Have children?
I boldly asked a married woman on the pediatrics faculty with one child and another on the way to invite me to her home. I was so glad to see her manage all this that I overlooked how tough it was to be pregnant, work all day, come home to mother a toddler, and entertain an anxious medical student. Only later would I understand the enormous challenge of juggling two lives.
I continued on my pioneer trail. I was the first woman to head a department at Detroit Receiving Hospital. Also the first woman to serve as an associate dean at two medical schools, as a vice dean, to chair the Group on Student Affairs of the Association of American Medical Colleges, and a committee of the American Hospital Association.
My husband was the real pioneer in our family. He allowed me to do my own thing and was a continuous source of encouragement and support. He also gave me the gift of mobility so that I could choose which job offer to accept. Thus I was the one who decided where we would live. I picked The University of Arizona College of Medicine and we moved to Tucson in 1979.
I am grateful that my children put up with me because I was the only mother on the block who worked outside the home. A neighbor asked, βHow can you bear to leave your adorable daughter at home all day with the colored help?β thereby crowding both racism and sexism in a 17-word question.
My research at both medical schools looked into what I called Medicine and Motherhood: The Double Burden of Women.
Motherhood with a capital βMβ started in the 17th century when kinship ties weakened and the nuclear family arose. Next came the concept of childhood. Industrialization separated the workplace from the home so fathers entrusted the upbringing of their children to their wives.
Historian Gina Morantz-Sanchez, spoke at a conference titled βA Century of Womenβs Healthβ I convened during the UAβs centennial.
βBetween 1750 and 1850 industrialization transformed the social meaning of gender roles,β Morantz-Sanchez said. βAn ideology of domesticity glorified the separation of home and public life β¦ and the female qualities of nurturing, moral superiority and maternity.β
The womenβs sphere was extolled by Catherine Beecher (born in 1800) who glorified housekeeping as work assigned to women by nature and God. Women performed duties of infinite variety providing constant intellectual stimulation and good exercise.
I wrote in 1997: βWe must move rapidly to provide working parents with universal child care and parental leave. We need universal public preschool and schools that provide a menu of after-school options.
βI have a vision for the future. In the 21st century, women will continue on the path to equal ACCESS to all education and career opportunities. Women will have increasing opportunities for ADVANCEMENT as the glass ceiling first cracks and than shatters. And there will be an ABATEMENT of the double burden carried by women who choose to have both children and a career.β
